


theories of (in)secure attachment

by Deputychairman



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Light Bondage, M/M, Reunion Sex, and in a manner of speaking this is their second date, and isn't afraid to put himself out there to achieve them, but at least Peter Nureyev has clear goals, they are both the dumbass in this relationship, those handcuffs are the Chekhov's gun of the Penumbra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 09:56:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17020485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: The very first time Peter kissed Juno Steel was right here in this apartment, before Juno even knew his name. Juno had brought him back here, just like today; given him a drink, just like today. Nothing has really changed, despite everything they have been through together. If he kisses Juno now, if he allows himself to spend another night with Juno without resolving anything about the last time, then the risk is there that sooner or later they’ll just end up right back where they started.





	1. Risk and opportunity

 

A successful thief knows how to leave the past behind, and Peter Nureyev is not just successful, he’s exceptional.

He has no identity, and no close ties to betray him or be used against him or to cloud his judgement. In their place, a loose network of influential contacts who don’t know his name, but know that he knows their secrets. And the only way to stay alive is to keep such relationships mutually beneficial, and to always keep his distance.

Making himself liked without giving anything away has become second nature to him. He charms, flatters, seduces where necessary, and walks away. Hails a cab to the nearest interstellar space port and boards the next transport out with a new name and his focus firmly on the future. If there were an award for leaving a planet without looking back either literally or metaphorically – and quite frankly there should be, he thinks – Peter Nureyev would win it. Under another name, of course, but he would win it.

Until Juno Steel.

Peter Nureyev, or people who looked like him even if they went by different names, has had incandescent one-night stands before. It might not have been true, but he’s told people he loved them before, too. He will leave Mars and all of this small…error of judgement in the past.

*

On Io, a soft breeze rustles the leaves of the trees and a warm sun shines on an artificial ocean. Both the terraformed moon and the exclusive crowd who gather there are exquisitely beautiful, and as different from Mars as it is possible to imagine. Peter has been meaning to visit for some time. Five minutes work picking pockets yields enough to keep him in the style to which he has become accustomed for the better part of a year. Swimming in the ocean is just as relaxing and restorative as the marketing material claims, and the food is outstanding. After 10 days in a Martian tomb, Peter relishes all of it. Of course he does.

He sits at a table in a white marble square, listening to birdsong and the splash of fountains as he sips a very expensive wine and eats imported oysters, and does not at all compare it to swallowing survival rations with Juno Steel’s head in his lap and Juno Steel’s blood on his hands. The experience was traumatic: only a fool would deny that. It’s perfectly normal that he should still dream about it, need some time to process and move past it. It’s perfectly normal to turn to somebody who isn’t there and feel an ache in his chest to find the table empty save for himself.

After a couple of days, Io becomes cloying and Peter Nureyev chooses a new name and a new destination.

*

On New Shenzhen, a client requires a particular painting that stubbornly refuses to appear on the market. Normally Peter enjoys art theft, but the mansion is so pathetically lacking in security and his client so nervous of the criminal aspect of the acquisition (quite why anybody would hire a thief and then balk at the idea of stealing is a question Peter finds unfathomable), that he opts for gentle manipulation instead.

The young owner of the work is most receptive to the attentions of Oliver Feiz, scholar and art historian. Gratifyingly receptive, in fact. It’s messy to use seduction when other options are available, but Peter is a past master at the art. So good that he rarely needs to actually see it through and deliver on what all his flattery and honeyed smiles have promised. If he wanted to, he could leave this gaudy palace with a perfectly legal bill of sale for that painting in his hand and a freely-given sapphire bracelet on his wrist. Or he could stay a little longer, spend the night with this pretty millionaire with his shiny hair and perfect white teeth, who laughs at all his jokes and looks at him like he hung the stars.

With a glass of champagne in his hand, he thinks perhaps he will. Overwrite the inconvenient memory of his last night on Mars by going to bed with this pampered heiress. Impossible to imagine anybody more different! A perfect candidate, Peter decides, for resolving a personal and professional issue simultaneously and putting his past firmly in the past.

He smiles like silk and allows a butler to refill his glass, and reminds himself that a look of adoration in a pretty face is more than enough justification to do this. He’s slept with worse people for worse reasons, and there is no reason to second guess himself now.

No reason except that little voice of instinct that no really good thief can afford to ignore. And that little voice is asking him what he’s doing here, in an exquisitely appointed bedroom, its walls hung with priceless works of art, listening to a mixture of boasting and flattery that leaves him utterly cold. That little voice is reminding him of Juno Steel parrying every compliment with a sardonic objection, a sharp back and forth like dancing, like the most difficult, most thrilling heist he has ever pulled. It is reminding him of the shabby office of a detective who doesn’t take bribes and isn’t in it for the money; an apartment in the wrong part of town because he’s from the wrong part of town and doesn’t care who knows it. Someone who knows what money can buy and doesn’t want any part of it for precisely that reason.

But that’s the _past_. He is Oliver Feiz tonight, and he can enjoy himself here in the lap of luxury without hurting anybody, can’t he?

But it turns out that he can’t. Oh, he sees the thing through: a stellar performance, the heiress left sated and satisfied on his satin sheets. Nobody but Peter will know that when it was time to hand over to his body’s involuntary physiognomic reactions, he had to pull on precisely those memories he was most determined to leave behind him to secure its cooperation. Nobody but Peter will ever know that he stands in his hotel shower until the failsafe cuts the water, and leaves the bracelet behind for housekeeping.

*

On Athena Prime, he thinks he sees Juno Steel.

Peter has kept his balance on a tightrope at the top of a skyscraper with certain death on either side and not even broken a sweat. He has reached through the only gap in a web of deadly lasers without a tremble; cracked a safe as alarms howled and armed guards closed in with barely a flicker in his pulse. And now, a half-glimpsed face in a crowd has his heart pounding and his palms sweating.

Juno has followed him here and tracked him down, desperate to be forgiven! Juno has come here as part of an investigation, and all Peter has to do is call his name and Juno will run to him!

Until the lady turns, and he isn’t Juno at all. He’s a perfectly ordinary stranger with a similar coat and the same hair, if you squint, who has both his eyes and absolutely nothing special about him at all. Peter knew that all along, but an empty space has opened in his chest where his delusion glowed just a moment ago.

That night he dreams of a cold Martian tomb and the sense memory of Juno shivering in his arms, snarling, _I’m fine, Nureyev, goddammit stop fussing over me_ … Clinging on when he goes to move away. In his dream, Juno says out loud, _stay here with me, Nureyev. Don’t let go._

Just before he surfaces from sleep, Mag’s voice laughs, _sounds like you’re in love, my boy - the great thief, caught at last!_ And Peter wakes up.

Some people don’t know they’re supposed to be in the past, and it seems that Juno Steel is one of them.

Peter lies awake and lets himself remember every last detail. Every touch of comfort that Juno accepted, every defensive joke; the sound of his voice from the other side of that locked door. And that one night when Juno gave him everything. Let Peter undress him, careful and reverent with his hands even while his mouth had been making fervent, filthy promises to Juno’s mouth. And to Juno’s neck, and the soft skin of his inner thighs, and his stomach, and –

Peter remembers every hitch of his breath, every gasp, every moan, watching every tremble and memorising every touch that made him shiver and beg for more. Peter remembers holding back as long as he could, aching and tender as Juno called his name, his only real name that nobody else still living knew was his name at all, and Juno Steel was calling out for him, breaking so beautifully for him that Peter felt himself break a little bit too.

But that’s over now, it was one night and it’s over. Juno had seen what they could be to each other, Juno had let him say all that, accept the danger of allowing himself to be known, and Juno had decided he wanted no part of it, because Juno Steel is a coward. Juno had lied to him with his body as well as with words, and Peter turns over and over that soft lie, _if you’re a fool that makes two of us,_ over and over until it’s worn away to nothing, a declaration that never was. There is honour among thieves but apparently none among detectives - Peter had kept his word, gone back into that tomb for Juno, and Juno had lied to him and left him in the night.

False tenderness that Peter should repay in kind: if that had really been Juno in the crowd today, Peter wouldn’t have fallen at his feet. He would have been cruel and cool, made Juno want him. Juno’s body might have made promises he didn’t keep, but he had still wanted Peter, and Peter could make him want him again. He could be the one to make promises, take what Juno offers him and then throw it back in his face. Make him feel what Peter felt.

Lying to other people is a way of life but lying to oneself is a fool’s game, and Peter Nureyev is no fool. He doesn’t want to disappear from Juno Steel’s life, so there is no point in pretending that he does. Especially in a life like his, where the performance will be purely for his own benefit. Nobody else in the galaxy cares what one successful thief feels about a handsome Martian detective who walked out on him in the night. Even the handsome detective himself seems not to care, and that is where all Peter’s burst of optimism comes unstuck. Waking up to an empty bed is an unequivocal answer to all his questions, isn’t it?

And yet he can’t leave it alone. Juno Steel is always there in the corner of his eye, just as he falls asleep, simultaneously pulling him closer and pushing him away, filling his mouth with sweetness one day and bitterness the next. Mars is everywhere, appearing in all the news feeds, his attention helplessly drawn to the infinitesimally small chance that he might catch sight of Juno.

What he finds instead are alarming rumours concerning Mars, and Hyperion City in particular, that invite his professional attention.

Not his more recent professional attention of stealing the unstealable from the unfathomably wealthy, but a more longstanding interest. So longstanding it dates back to when his name was Peter Nureyev every day, and he thought he was going to save his planet from tyranny, or whatever idealistic words Mag had filled his head with. Because Mag is someone else who doesn’t know he’s supposed to be in the past. Perhaps having Juno in his head has stirred up memories he had thought safely buried. Or perhaps it’s Juno himself: foolish, principled Juno, standing up against the big mean world, nothing like Mag at all except in the way they are willing to die for what they believed in.

Or perhaps it’s been so long since Peter met anybody with principles that he’s seeing similarities where there are none.

*

The most exclusive cybernetic company on Mars closes its doors to private clients.

A real estate conglomerate merges with another, restructures its management into a parent company and a subsidiary and a second subsidiary and a trust and a board of directors and registers its head office somewhere extremely hard to find. Peter knows because he found it, but it took him a lot longer than it was supposed to.

Shares in the robotics sector go up, and keep going up.

In Hyperion City, Juno Steel keeps irregular hours. He wears an eyepatch.

Peter knows because he watches the public access feeds around his office and his apartment, using a very simple facial recognition plugin to alert him. The first time it beeps is to show him Juno stumble at midday into the bar closest to his apartment like he hasn’t been home all night and has hit rock bottom, and Peter clenches his fists so hard his fingers ache, his whole body tense with fury: how dare _Juno_ be falling apart when he was the one who left? Peter considers but ultimately rejects the idea of bugging Juno’s comms, but he does call the office several times, disguising his voice through an excellent piece of software, until he is quite convinced that Juno’s secretary is both terrifyingly smart and incorruptibly devoted to Juno. He can almost hear Juno scoff _those can’t both be true, Nureyev_ , but Peter knows that they are because they are true of him too.

It is quite clear to him that Juno would despise him for what he’s doing, but he still doesn’t stop. Quite honestly, he doesn’t know what else to do. Perhaps part of the appeal is how much Juno would hate it, a small act of revenge he will almost certainly never know about.

*

A job comes up on Mars. Peter hesitates, weighing pros and cons for much longer than he normally would, and when the public access stream shows him Juno Steel staring out of a cab window like he doesn’t know who he is or where he is, Peter takes it. It’s laughably easy: beneath him, really, but it’s nice to have plausible deniability about his motives for going back. It’s not his best cover story, but it will do.

Industrial espionage is so tedious, the security always designed to protect against the outside attack that never comes while the disgruntled employee with full clearance walks right up to take what they want. Sometimes Peter considers going into security consultancy, but after three days masquerading as a marketing director at Olympus Mons Construction, he knows in his heart that these people deserve everything that’s coming to them. On the fourth day he uses his company-issued passwords to make copies of everything their rival is paying him for, plus a few files for his own personal interest, leaves the building on his lunch break, and never goes back.

Olympus Mons Construction has taken a huge order for thousands of prefab housing units, routed through so many shell companies and off-planet trusts that it’s almost impossible to say where the payment comes from. This isn’t Peter’s area of expertise, but it looks rather like the mayoral challenger may be involved. Martian politics would have been even less Peter’s area of expertise, to say nothing of his area of interest, if his algorithm hadn’t woken him at 5am to show him Juno sitting on a park bench with the very same mayoral challenger.

Peter Nureyev becomes an overnight expert on Martian politics, and he doesn’t like what he finds.

*

The next time he calls the Juno Steel Detective Agency, Peter speaks to Rita in his own voice.

“I’m a friend of Juno’s,” he lies.

“Uh-huh,” Rita replies. “ _Sure_ you are.”

“Well, perhaps friend isn’t quite the right word,” he concedes. “I’m…”

His pause is studied, deliberate, but when he planned the call this was the part that had taken him longest to get right. What can he say to Rita that will convince her of his genuine emotional investment without lying too egregiously about the extent to which it is clearly not reciprocated? I’m a fool who’s still in love with him? A one night stand whose name he’s already forgotten? (Peter flatters himself that this is not true, but he cannot entirely rule it out.)

“I’m a little worried about Juno,” he settles on.

“That’s real nice of you, but if anyone wants to get to Mr Steel they’ve gotta get through me first. So you don’t need to worry no more, Mr…?”

“Perhaps I could leave you a number where you can reach me, just in case,” Peter says. “Should you ever require any assistance with that.”

Just as he’d calculated, Rita must conclude there is no harm in writing down a number. He hears her pencil scratching as he reads out the number of his private comms, and he hears her repeat it back under her breath.

“Wait a minute, I know that number,” she says slowly. “Where do I know that number?”

It would almost certainly be wiser to hang up now, but Peter stays on the line to the sound of Rita tapping furiously at computer keys and then a gasp.

“It’s _you!_ From the _letter_ , and the breaking Mr Steel’s heart and _leaving_ him! Why I oughta - ”

“Is that what he told you?” Peter blurts out, shocked beyond belief. He should _definitely_ hang up now.

“Of _course_ not!” Rita squawks at him. “He would _never_ talk to me about his sex life, what kind of office do you think we run here? There’s laws against that sort of thing!”

“Are there really?”

“Well if there ain’t, there oughta be.”

“So…how is it that you already have my number?”

“Well it was like this, see: Mr Steel disappeared for a week and came back all mopey, without his eye and covered in love bites which he told me were bruises -”

The idea that he’d left marks on Juno that he never got to see in daylight is exquisitely painful, and Peter can’t help the bitter laugh that escapes him.

“I know, right?” Rita agrees. “Who gets bruises on their _neck?_ Unless someone tried to strangle him, but I’ve seen what it looks like when someone tries to strangle Mr Steel and it does _not_ look like how these looked. And he had this letter he carried around everywhere except for all the times he left it on his desk so I thought it was professional correspondence and I read it and it wasn’t so I’m sorry about invading his privacy like that, but if there’s anything I learned from watching my shows it’s that you gotta be real careful with love letters when you’re having a secret romance. So I just had a _very_ quick look to see who Peter Nureyev was because he didn’t seem like he was any good for Mr Steel at all, and – and – and if you’re him, you have got some nerve calling me up like this!”

Peter is quite taken aback. So taken aback that he actually defends himself.

“I appreciate that you have no reason to believe me, but I absolutely did not leave Juno or break his heart!”

“Ha! So you _did_ leave love bites all over his neck!”

This conversation is not going quite as Peter expected. In fairness, he hadn’t really known what to expect, and has been fully prepared to improvise to convince Rita to contact him if anything out of the ordinary should happen to Juno. Discussing what he had done to Juno Steel on the one and only time he had taken him to bed was well beyond the possible routes he had expected to go down, is all.

“That’s not the sort of question a gentleman answers,” Peter tells her firmly, forcing away the memory of Juno spread out beneath him, his bare skin, the hitch of his breath as Peter kissed those marks into his neck.

“Alright then. No it ain’t, so you did the right thing not telling me. And in that case, it was real nice talking to you Mr Nureyev, and knowing Mr Steel like I do I will give you the benefit of the doubt and keep this number in a safe place just in case anything happens.”

“Well thank you, Rita. I appreciate that,” he says weakly, aware of having very much lost the upper hand.

It’s a strangely reassuring call, all things considered.

*

Much less reassuring is when Rita actually does call him, and tells him that Juno has disappeared.

Of course he had noticed Juno’s absence from the public access streams, seen him set off with Alessandra Strong and not return, but that wasn’t the same as disappeared. There was only so much spying ( _stalking,_ Mag’s voice in his head suggests with barely suppressed amusement) he was prepared to go in for, and at the time, in Strong’s company, Juno had seemed as safe as he was ever likely to be. Peter had even had the time to indulge a brief pang of jealousy.

“He didn’t even tell me where he was going,” Rita tells him, her voice getting higher and higher and her words faster and faster. “And now he’s just gone! Vanished into thin air and I can’t find him anywhere and I was going crazy worrying about him and then I thought maybe he was with you like the last time he disappeared - ”

The hope in her voice is palpable, and he wishes more than anything that he could have proven it justified.

“I’m afraid he isn’t,” he says gently.

“Then what’s _happened_ to him?” she wails, and Peter experiences the unpleasant realisation that with the life he leads, if anything were to happen to him most likely nobody would even notice, let alone wail their distress down the comms at total strangers about it. Juno’s all-alone-against-the-world act was very convincing, but that didn’t make it true, while for all Peter’s offhand references to wealthy friends, he knows perfectly well that done of them would so much as blink if he vanished without a trace.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” he promises her.

Finding out is easier said than done.

Juno’s trail goes cold in the tunnels underneath Hyperion City. All that Peter can uncover is that he wasn’t alone, and that one of the people with him is Mayor Pereyra. Days pass; the election comes and goes, and there is no sign of Juno.

Just a missing former mayor, and a missing detective who is working for the new mayor. At the same time as a huge, secret, construction project seals off Oldtown, the biggest cybernetics and robotics companies on Mars cancel all staff leave and their production plant goes into overdrive. Lights blaze all night long, and shipments pour out in the direction of Oldtown. Inevitably the secrecy starts to fray, and Peter is horrified by what he discovers. He can’t think of anybody who would be less in favour of cybernetic interference in the residents of his old neighbourhood than Juno Steel, or a better way to impress him than putting a stop to it.

He doesn’t hear from Rita again until he’s hiding outside the mayor’s office, trying to remember everything he knows about hacking into secure computer servers. Normally Peter wouldn’t take a call under such circumstances, but if he doesn’t answer he’ll spend the rest of the night wondering. Is Juno home safe? Still missing? Or the worst might have happened, and Peter might be here on Mars, interfering in Martian affairs that have nothing to do with him, in the distant hope of impressing a detective who is already dead.

He answers the call.

“Mr Nureyev? This is Rita, Mr Steel’s secretary and I’ve got good news and bad news,” she begins. Peter doesn’t know her very well, but dumb hope immediately blooms – if Juno were dead, this surely isn’t how Rita would begin?

“The good news is that I found Mr Steel and he’s fine,” relief makes him physically weak and for a moment he allows himself to lean against the wall behind him. “He feels _very_ bad about not telling me what was going on and letting me think he was dead but we talked it out and we’ve put it behind us now, but the bad news is the mayor is going to take over the entire city with mind control robots and Mr Steel asked me to call you - which I think was quite a big deal for him, just so you know - because we could really use your help breaking into his office so I can take the server down and stop them!”

No part of that should have been remotely reassuring, but from being certain Juno Steel was dead and that Peter had to break into a building as secure as a bank vault to attempt a complex piece of hacking for which he was not qualified, to knowing that Juno was alive and well and on the case, along with Rita whom he suspected was eminently qualified for the complex hacking at hand – it is quite a turnaround in his fortunes.

“Rita, how nice to hear from you!” he replies. “Conveniently enough, I am in front of the mayor’s office as we speak, and I was just wracking my brains for how in the world I was going to manage to deactivate the THEIAs once I got in.”

That first breezy response is the last one he manages - living as Peter Nureyev is much harder than he had expected it to be, and his clever distance is the first casualty. None of the other people he has been ever got in over their heads, and found themselves on a dark street in Hyperion City, overwhelmed with feeling for a detective they have only slept with once. If he had been running this operation as somebody else, he would have put more thought into his wardrobe as well. What he’s wearing now is perfectly appropriate for the job at hand – figure-hugging, all black, plenty of pockets – but if he’d known this was the first sight Juno would have of him after all this time, he would have chosen something with more _impact_.

Of course he has thought about it, exhaustively run over how such a meeting might play out on the scale of anger to icy disdain to grudging warmth to falling into each other’s arms, but none of that is any help to him as he steps out of the shadows. Here is Juno in front of him, once again wearing an eye-patch, and with nothing more than his physical presence, all Peter’s methodical thoughts of alarm systems and access codes are sent flying. Wild-eyed and desperate, defending his city against the combined wealth and corruption of its elected representatives, and the indifference and corruption of its police force - Juno Steel couldn’t have found a better way to burst back into Peter Nureyev’s life if he’d been trying. And of course he wasn’t trying, he wouldn’t try: a man doesn’t walk out in the night without a backward glance, only to inexplicably pull out all the stops to impress you 8 months later.

A very few times, with the edge of loneliness creeping up on him, Peter might have closed his eyes and let himself imagine Juno Steel coming back to him, voice soft and sorry, wanting the second chance that Peter wouldn’t give him if he knew what was good for him. Sometimes his anger was enough to imagine he could turn away, say something cutting and leave Juno calling after him. But Peter has very little sense of self-preservation where Juno Steel is concerned, and sometimes in those daydreams he gave Juno that second chance with no questions asked. In those versions of the story, Juno always let Peter take him to bed, and in the morning he’d still be there to blink at him in the early light and murmur, _you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me._

Peter’s good at holding a lot of imaginary people in his head just where they’re supposed to be. This one is proving much harder to pin down.

Juno looks – wonderful. Thinner, like he hasn’t been eating well; exhausted; running on fumes, and profoundly, devastatingly attractive at a deep cellular level that Peter is powerless to resist. His whole body yearns for Juno, drawn to him like tides to the moon. His careful analysis of what it is reasonable to ask for, what he might actually expect Juno to agree to, is all meaningless now. He wants whatever Juno will give him. Even if all Juno can offer is one night and waking up alone again, he’ll take it.

“Hello, Juno,” he says, and it’s a miracle how steady his voice sounds.

“Hey, Nureyev,” Juno shifts from one foot to the other, glances at Peter, down at his own feet, back at Peter, puts his hands into his pockets then takes them out again.

Before he can say anything he’d regret, Peter turns his attention to Rita who looks ready to burst out of her own skin in excitement.

“Rita, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person.”

“Likewise I’m sure,” Rita says, holding out her hand for him to shake, because of course, shaking hands, that would have been an acceptable, conventional overture to allow him to touch Juno, but the moment has passed. He shakes Rita’s hand instead.

She turns to Juno with her hand still in Peter’s and hisses, “I can’t believe you would keep this from me! He’s so handsome and dashing and mysterious!”

“He can hear you, Rita,” Juno says flatly, looking like he wishes the ground would swallow him up. Peter would be happy to step in if the ground can’t oblige, but it wouldn’t help to say so.

“I know, but it don’t count as the rude kind of talking about someone if you say nice things about them, ain’t that right Mr Nureyev?”

“I defer to your greater knowledge in these matters,” Peter inclines his head in a shallow bow as she releases his hand.

“Mr Steel, aren’t you going to shake hands with your _friend?_ ”

Juno glares at her, and Peter blithely holds out his hand as if he hadn’t noticed. He’s not clear on the exact scope of Rita’s influence over her employer, but he’s confident it is more than sufficient to get Juno’s hand in his, even if only for a moment.

And he’s right. Juno finally looks at him, properly looks at him, visibly takes a deep breath and takes Peter’s hand.

Peter can’t remember a single other handshake in his life that felt less like a social convention and more like a kiss. Juno’s hand is warm and strong and Peter remembers exactly what those hands felt like on his skin. He doesn’t tell his feet to move but somehow he has drifted closer to Juno, or Juno has drifted closer to him, and they are gazing at each other, hand in hand, just inches apart. Juno swallows, licks his lips, and doesn’t let go.

It’s all the evidence Peter needs. Juno Steel might have walked out in the night, but he most certainly has not forgotten about Peter Nureyev.

“It’s good to see you again, Juno,” Peter murmurs.

“Uh, yeah. Same. You too. You’re – you look - ”

“Handsome and dashing and mysterious?” Rita offers.

Juno makes a, _yeah, what she said_ gesture in her direction and doesn’t attempt to finish his sentence with words. It’s not until she pointedly clears her throat that he releases Peter’s hand.

Peter doesn’t judge himself too harshly for finding it a little hard to concentrate after that.

*

Obviously he shows off for Juno. He’s in his element here and he isn’t too proud to turn that to his advantage, to make everything look easy. Take out a top of the range sensor system here, deactivate an alarm there, stop Juno stepping forward into a pressure plate with an arm across his chest.

“It’s that way,” Rita whispers, squinting at a blueprint on her comms. “All the power couplings lead to that great big hot room over there so it’s gotta be the servers. Great big hot rooms are always where the servers are. Unless they’ve got a sauna in here, ‘cause that would be hot and take a lot of power too – do they got a sauna in here, do you think, boss?”

Her gaze catches Peter’s for a split second as she addresses herself to Juno, and Peter could swear she was doing it deliberately, flinging out words with an undeniable association to heat and nakedness.

“I wanna say no, but Pilot Pereyra used city funds to build a full-size spa and massage parlour in their house, so nothing’s off the table,” Juno tells her, and then his gaze too seems to falter on Peter’s face before he drags it away again.

They’re all going to get killed if Peter doesn’t get a grip.

Fortunately, it is the server room at the end of the corridor and not a sauna after all. Peter opens the lock in seconds, and the three of them take in row after row of gently humming computer servers.

“Wow, that is a lot of – computer stuff,” says Juno. “Please tell me you don’t have to do them one at a time.”

“I don’t have to do them one at a time,” Rita obliges. “But I do have to concentrate, like, super hard, because I only did one Theia soul before and this is so many more than that so you can’t even _talk_ to me while I do this, ok?”

“Sure, ok, we’ll just wait outside then. Guard the door. Wait, do you need anything? Like, a screwdriver, or one of those things to put information in the computer? Or -”

Rita’s face expresses something close to pain at such a staggering display of technological illiteracy, and she turns her back on them without another word.

“Guess we’ll just – be out in the corridor then,” Juno mutters, and actually puts his hand on Peter’s arm to steer him out of the door.

The corridor is dark, and cold, and silent, and no guards or alarms appear to break that silence. It’s just Peter Nureyev and Juno Steel, with everything they aren’t saying hanging heavy between them.

Juno is the first to break it.

“So what were you doing here anyway, Nureyev? Not a lot worth stealing in here.”

“Exactly the same thing you were. You needed help getting in, I needed help to hack into the servers.”

“And you wanted to hack into the servers because…?”

Peter’s temper frays. “Oh, no reason at all, Juno! I’m just incurably curious about advanced robotic operating systems and tonight seemed like a beautiful night to break in and indulge myself. With everything you know about me, why do _you_ think?”

Juno scowls at him.”Fine. Fine, you knew about this and you wanted to stop it.”

If Peter had hoped to impress him by saving everyone in his neighbourhood, it doesn’t seem to be working. But then he’d never expected winning Juno Steel back to be easy, had he?

“Yes. Exactly so.”

“And you’re on Mars just for this?”

He’s staring very hard down the corridor just over Peter’s shoulder, but Peter knows the difference between keeping watch and avoiding eye contact. This is definitely the second one. And there’s a difference between not trusting someone and secretly hoping they’re here for you, but Peter really isn’t sure at all which one this is.

He fixes Juno with a sultry gaze. “This, and other things,” he says airily.

There’s just enough light to see Juno swallow as he finally looks at Peter. “Yeah? What other things?”

Time slows as the moment stretches out. All that exists is Juno, looking at him like he’s all the questions and none of the answers and there’s nothing he loves better than asking.

It’s an unforgivable lapse in concentration, he knows that.

“Nureyev!” Juno yells in the very same instant as several things happen simultaneously.

Peter notices the robot that has silently approached them; the robot fires; and Juno launches himself at Peter and knocks him out of the way and onto the floor. They land in a tangle, Juno on top of Peter, their faces inches apart. Peter blinks up at him, the novelty of Juno essentially pinning him to the floor, the warmth and strength of his body, almost distracting him from the rather more urgent _robot shooting at them_ issue. Well. Never let it be said that he has lost focus of what he is here on Mars for.

Juno seems to be having the same trouble identifying his immediate priorities. He blinks back, gun in hand but all his attention on Peter, and out of the corner of his eye Peter sees the robot take aim. With a desperate burst of strength and priority realignment, he flips them over just in time for the bolt to scorch the floor where they had been sprawled a split second ago.

A flash from Juno’s gun, and a shower of sparks and smoke bursts forth from the robot, followed by a high pitched electronic screech. The corridor fills with the metallic smell of burned wiring as the robot starts to keel over.

When it pitches over to one side and slides down the wall, Peter finally turns his attention back to Juno. Brave, sharpshooting Juno with only one eye, arm raised and his gun still trained on the smouldering wreck of the robot. He is all focus, making absolutely certain the thing is down before finally lowering the gun and letting his gaze return to Peter’s face. His free hand rests on Peter’s thigh as if he hadn’t even noticed.

Juno licks his lips, rubs the blaster across one eyebrow. “Huh. You see that? Lucky shot.”

“It was. Thank you, Juno,” he says, careful to allow only sincerity and gratitude into his voice. He might not be rushing to get off Juno, but something tells him this isn’t the right time to point that out. Peter is not too proud to take what he can, where he can, and if a dark corridor in the mayor’s office with a robot burning next to them offers him the opportunity to straddle Juno Steel, he is not about to turn it down.

From inside the server room, Rita’s voice screeches, “Boss? What’s happening out there?”

“Nothing, Rita,” Juno yells back a little too quickly just as her head appears in the doorway. A glance is enough to show her the smouldering robot, Juno’s gun in his hand, and Peter on top of him in a way that might possibly leave room for misinterpretation.

“Oh!” she says. “Oh, ok then. I’ll just - ”

“Yeah. You do that.”

“I was gonna say, I’ve just finished but I can go back in if you need another minute?”

Juno groans – or is it more of a growl? Either way it is Peter’s cue to rise gracefully to his feet, and offer Juno his hand to help him up. Juno lies there for long moment, looking up at him with an expression Peter cannot read, until finally he groans again (definitely a groan this time, Peter decides) and takes it.

*

Once Rita turns them back on, the public access feeds show one random act of vandalism, a car theft and a bar fight in the shiny clean streets of Newtown.

Juno watches grim-faced. “We did do the right thing, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” say Peter and Rita in chorus.

“Oh. Well. Let’s get out of here, then,” and Rita leads the way to the basement and through an endless series of interconnected tunnels that bring them out miles away, blinking in Hyperion City’s neon midnight glare.

Peter brushes dust and cobwebs from his sleeves, and keeps brushing even once he’s clean just for something to do with his hands. He’s done what he came here for, and now there’s no pretext left for him still to be in Hyperion City at all, much less standing on this street corner. The time has come to either march up to Juno and plead his case or leave, and he isn’t ready to do either of those things.

Neither, it seems, is Juno. While Peter stands here like a fool just waiting to be noticed, Juno is having a whispered argument with his secretary. Although he pretends not to out of politeness, Peter can hear them, and his respect for Rita reaches new, dizzy heights.

“If you don’t go over there and talk to him right now, then I will!” she hisses at Juno.

“He doesn’t wanna talk to me, Rita. Trust me on this.”

“He. Is. Standing. In. Dramatic. Lighting. Waiting. For. You. To. Notice. Him,” she says through gritted teeth. It’s nice to know someone appreciates his artistry.

Peter has excellent peripheral vision, so he sees Juno shoot him another glance that he _supposes_ is meant to be furtive, and lowers his voice so that Peter can barely make it out as he hisses: “He’s just – like that. I think he brings his own dramatic lighting with him wherever he goes.”

Rita doesn’t seem to mind being overheard.“Boss, there ain’t nobody here to appreciate it except you and me, and I may be prettier than you – I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, Mr Steel, but friends have gotta be honest with each other – but he is not waiting there to talk to me.”

“I don’t know, maybe he is. You two had your mutual admiration society going in there, maybe he’s waiting to offer you a job in his – intergalactic criminal enterprises, or something.”

“Then you better offer me a raise and get over there before it’s too late, boss!”

“Rita, I -” he begins, and it’s not his yelling voice or his angry take-on-the-world voice, or even that desperate about-to-make-a-bad decision voice Peter remembers. He just sounds – scared, almost, like crossing the street to talk to Peter is _worse_ than robots that take over your brain.

He slumps, says something that Peter doesn’t catch that finishes with: “I don’t think I can fix this, Rita.” Peter wants to shake him and yell, _yes you can, you idiot! What is it you think I’m **doing** here on Mars? _

“Then you don’t,” Rita says, categorical. Then she reconsiders. “Although, you would be very surprised what you can fix with online tutorials and a tube of toothpaste – that might not work here, forget I said anything - but my mother always told me that if you can’t fix what you broke, then the least you can do is apologise. And then buy them a new one, which again doesn’t necessarily apply here but I’m just putting it out there as a general piece of advice for another day.”

Juno looks over his shoulder again and mutters something, shaking his head as he gestures a circle in the air. His part of the conversation is easy enough to guess from Rita’s reply.

“Apologise, tell him you love him and let him sweep you off your feet in a grand romantic gesture, something like that, yeah!” she says. Rita has sensed weakness and she’s all enthusiasm again. Peter appreciates the vote of confidence. “Anyway I’m gonna go home now, Mr Steel, I’ll call you in the morning to see how you got on!”

With that, she flings her arms around Juno, pushes him encouragingly in Peter’s direction as she lets go and turns on her heel, the sound of her footsteps echoing fading into the Martian night. Juno watches her go before finally, finally crossing the street to Peter’s side.

“Juno,” Peter says, making his voice as cool as a long drink of liquid nitrogen, letting some of that bitterness bleed through. He has a feeling that coming on too strong now would just be counterproductive – he will just have to hope that good lighting is adding what his voice won’t.

“Nureyev, I -” Juno begins, and then stops again. “Listen – I told you this wasn’t personal, and it isn’t, but I figure I owe you - I owe you a drink, at least.”

Peter laughs out loud. He can’t help it. “A drink? Oh, Juno, you think you owe me a _drink?_ ”

He shouldn’t have laughed, of course he shouldn’t. For a second it’s touch and go whether Juno will simply walk away, shoulders stiff with humiliation. But he doesn’t. He nods like he’s conceding the point and stays right where he is, hands shoved into his pockets, looking at Peter.

“You tell me then. I called you up out of the blue and you came, so I thought you might wanna at least get drunk at my expense and - yell at me, or something,” he says. It is the most Juno-esque way of asking someone out that Peter can possibly imagine, and god help him but he is hopelessly charmed.

“Your secretary called me up, as a matter of fact,” he parries, fascinated by Juno’s version of flirting.

“Well, you’re free to have a drink with her if you want, but she won’t let you yell at her. I don’t think you should even try.” Juno swallows but stands his ground when Peter steps closer.

“What if I don’t want to yell at anybody?”

Juno shrugs, looks down at the sidewalk. “Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

“And I didn’t say I didn’t want a drink,” Peter says, too fast, pushed on the defensive by Juno’s complete mastery of the form.

Juno’s head comes up, and the moment stretches out and out, round Mars and back again as slow as you like as he gazes at Peter and Peter gazes back and knows he’s already lost. It’s just as well Juno Steel isn’t asking for much, because whatever he asks for Peter is going to give him.

“Uh, well,” Juno looks up and down the deserted street then back at him. “Everything’s closed by now. I guess we could go back to my place?”

 


	2. history (not) repeating itself

 

Back to Juno’s place like history repeating itself, except this time Peter doesn’t need anything from Juno Steel’s pockets. It’s a very promising start, to have a drink together. In Juno’s apartment, mere steps away from Juno’s bedroom. Which of course he has been into: twice, in fact, neither time with Juno. The first while he waited for him to get home all those months ago, to break into the Utgard Express; the second at Rita’s request, just a week ago in a fruitless search for the lady himself. He’d searched the place thoroughly, found mould in the fridge, a gun taped to the underside of the coffee table, a pair of handcuffs and his own letter in the nightstand.

These aren’t things that Juno needs to know he knows.

As a matter of professional pride, Peter doesn’t get nervous. He doesn’t panic, he never trips over his own words unless it’s quite deliberate, and whoever he is playing, he always knows the right thing to say.

At 4am in Juno Steel’s kitchen, sitting on one of Juno’s two rickety chairs while Juno rinses glasses and fusses over ice and a bottle with his back to Peter, he’s finding himself at a loss for words. All the other people he has been knew what they wanted, and when you know what you want it’s much easier to know what to say to get it. If he could only conduct this strange encounter as somebody else, they might make a better job of it than him. After all, it was Peter Nureyev who had woken up alone, wasn’t it? Perhaps Rex Glass or Duke Rose could get him into bed and actually keep him there.

“Here,” Juno places a large glass of amber coloured liquid in front of him, steps back to lean against the counter. He has the height advantage, like this.

Peter raises an eyebrow at his enormous drink.

“Why Juno, anyone would think you were trying to get me drunk,” he says, not sure if he means to flirt or provoke.

“That won’t get you drunk. I put water in it, didn’t I?”

Peter takes a cautious sip. Pulls a face: there may be water in it, but it’s fighting a losing battle against the alcohol.

“I grew up on that drink, Nureyev. It’s an Oldtown special. Makes all your troubles go away, until you wake up in the morning with a headache to split your skull in two and a whole lot of new troubles from what you did when you were drunk.”

“Perhaps I’ll just have the one, then. In memory of Oldtown and how it used to be.” That almost gets a smile out of Juno, so he pushes his advantage. “And the people who grew up there.”

Juno flops into the other chair and clinks his glass against Peter’s.

“Alright. I’ll drink to that.”

**

One drink down, Juno’s back to him as he mixes another Peter says, “Juno…”

“Yeah?”

“Before we go any further, there’s something I ought to tell you.”

“This doesn’t sound good.”

“I’m afraid I might have lied to you, the last time we saw each other.”

Juno snorts. Turns to look at him, bottle in hand: “What, you want me to act surprised? Of course you lied to me.”

 _Just like you lied to me,_ Peter doesn’t say. _You said you were coming with me, that you were sure. And then when I woke up -_

It is very strange to be having this conversation at Juno’s kitchen table, like they’re playing at something that never was.

“You don’t want me to be a little more specific? We spent ten days together, Juno: are you assuming that every single thing that came out of my mouth was a lie?”

A small silence.

“Not _everything_ …” Juno says eventually. Perhaps he’s thinking how Peter came back for him just like he’d said he would, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead he mimes looking at a watch he isn’t wearing, and continues: “Ok, Nureyev. I’ve got a couple hours and nowhere to be: confess. Gimme the whole list. What did you lie about?”

The things he has lied about would need more than a couple of hours to confess to, except most of those lies weren’t told by him, precisely. They were told by Rex Glass, Duke Rose, any number of names to fit any number of men who weren’t Peter Nureyev. Peter Nureyev has barely lied at all, and especially not to Juno Steel. The awareness that the reverse is not true is always there in the corner of his eye, but he pushes it away.

“I lied when I told you I’d disappear for good if you didn’t want to come with me. I’m afraid I’ve been keeping a rather close eye on you all this time. From a distance, sometimes, and sometimes in person - ”

Juno scowls. “Those flowers on my birthday, they _were_ from you,” he says accusingly.

“ _That’s_ the part you object to?”

“Who’s objecting? I’m not objecting.”

“It _sounded_ like you were objecting.”

“I’m a natural sceptic. That’s how I always sound.”

For a second, here in this apartment, he is painfully reminded of how Juno Steel sounds when he really isn’t objecting; when he is letting Rex Glass pull him close and kiss him; when he’s saying, _that sounds exciting too_ in a hotel room way across town.

“No, it is _not_ how you always sound, Juno,” he says, and tries not to let that memory play any further, to what Juno sounds like beneath him in the dark, coming undone and calling out his name.

Juno can’t read his mind any more, but his lips are parted and he’s gazing at Peter as if he was remembering exactly the same thing. Until he clears his throat abruptly and turns away again, back to Peter as he slams ice into their glasses.

“What do you want from me, Nureyev?” he asks through clenched teeth.

“What do _I_ want from _you_? I’ve been perfectly clear what I want all along! The question is what _you_ want.”

The crack of the ice tray against the countertop, once, twice, three times is his only reply, and then it’s a crunch not a crack as something breaks. “Dammit,” Juno says in a voice that sounds only a couple of steps from the edge. “ _God_ dammit piece of shit. Ow.”

Two steps bring Peter to his side.

“Let me see,” he says, reaching for the hand Juno holds awkwardly in front of him, drop of blood welling on his thumb. It’s nothing, barely a scratch, but it must sting.

Juno goes still as their hands touch, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights, before snatching his hand away like Peter’s burning him.

“Get off me,” he snarls.

Puts his thumb to his mouth and sucks away the blood, leaning back against his own kitchen counter all tension and defiance. What he’s defying at this precise moment Peter couldn’t say: the whole world, probably. Himself. But he doesn’t move away, and neither does Peter. Doesn’t break eye contact either: that one fierce eye never leaves Peter’s face, unblinking, like Peter has him backed into a corner when the reality is a half step left or right would give him back his polite distance.

Juno doesn’t step left or right. He takes a shaky breath and pushes himself fully upright, straightening into the space between them, bringing them even closer, so close that Peter can feel the warmth of him, smell whatever it is he puts in his hair. If Juno wants him to back off, he’s going to have to say so, because Peter doesn’t have the strength to tear himself away. He’s going to get burned here, and he doesn’t care.

Juno’s chest is rising and falling with his breathing. All Peter needs to do is close the gap, and Juno would let him. He’d fall into Peter’s arms with a sob, part his lips and kiss back like he was drowning, sharp with that edge of desperation Peter can almost taste.

But Peter doesn’t close the gap, not quite. Instead he reaches up to trace one finger feather-light from eyebrow to cheekbone and then drops his hand again.

Juno closes his eye for the space of a heartbeat, breathes, “Nureyev…”

“Juno,” Peter lets his own voice soften to match, taking them away from whatever conflict Juno is carrying in him.

“C’mon. I can take it. Tell me what else you lied about.”

“Nothing else,” Peter murmurs. “I lie all my life, to everybody else, but not to you.”

“Not even in that hotel room?”

What did Peter say, in that hotel room? That he wanted Juno to come away with him, that he had friends with the money for a cybernetic eye _, I think I might have fallen in love with you…_ Would it be easier for him, to think that wasn’t true? That it was just a line Peter fed him, something he said to everybody he slept with?

It may be what Juno wants to hear, but Peter didn’t lie to him before and he won’t start now.

Peter shakes his head. “Everything else was true, Juno.”

Whatever inner turmoil Juno is struggling with makes him frown, shake his head like he’s mirroring Peter. “I’m not _that_ good a lay,” he mutters.

As if this was only about sex, and Peter some ingénue whose head had been turned by nothing more than a pretty face! Peter raises an eyebrow at him.

“And yet here I am, in your apartment, on a planet I swore I’d never return to. If you don’t believe me, you must draw your own conclusions about my motives.”

Juno’s gaze flickers down and up again, assessing. He can hardly see Peter’s body from this almost-touching distance, but Peter knows a once-over when he sees one.

“If I wanted to seduce somebody else, I think you know I could do it in a heartbeat. I’m not here for lack of other options,” Peter snaps, stung at the implication Juno didn’t even voice out loud.

The clock on the kitchen wall ticks; in the glass behind Juno’s back, an ice cube makes a minute cracking sound as it melts. Neither of them moves and neither of them looks away as the silence stretches out until it’s unbearable. Outside, the wail of a siren rises and fades into the night. So late it’s almost early, Hyperion City is as close as it gets to quiet, just the low hum of traffic in the distance. Very far away, a train.

“I screwed up, Nureyev. With you. I know I did,” Juno says very quietly, like an extension of the city.

That one eye blinks at him. Peter doesn’t dare to say anything.

“And I know it doesn’t fix anything, but I’m sorry, ok? You were good to me - god knows why, but you were - and I was an asshole to you, and I’m so, so sorry.”

Juno’s so close, looking up at him almost pleadingly. As if Peter could ever refuse him anything. A weakness like this is terrifying, exhilarating: Juno Steel is the most complex, dangerous heist he has ever pulled, and that professional calm he’s so proud of is fraying at the edges. He wants so much to touch Juno but a wrong move now could wreck everything, like reaching for the jewels before you’ve disconnected the last alarm.

“So what is it that you want from me now, Juno? Why have you brought me here? Do you want me to forgive you? Or am I supposed to yell at you, tell you I never want to see you again?”

Juno shakes his head.

His gaze never wavers. One hand, the one with the pinprick of blood, drifts up to touch Peter’s arm. Peter shifts closer again, a plant turning towards the sun, and slides his other arm lightly around Juno’s waist.

A huff of breath that’s almost a laugh. “You still smell the same, you know that?”

Peter can’t help himself.

“I couldn’t possibly change my cologne knowing that you like it so much,” he whispers, then leans in and inhales, his nose almost touching Juno’s throat. “I put a drop just -” He lets his lips brush feather-light over Juno’s pulse, once, twice. “Here - ”

Juno makes a tiny helpless sound and tilts his head back, offering. Surrendering.

The very first time Peter kissed Juno Steel was right here in this apartment, before Juno even knew his name. Juno had brought him back here, just like today; given him a drink, just like today. Nothing has really changed, despite everything they have been through together. If he kisses Juno now, if he allows himself to spend another night with Juno without resolving anything about the last time, then the risk is there that sooner or later they’ll just end up right back where they started.

Every last detail of his life and work is planned, controlled, analysed for weakness – it has to be, if he wants to survive. He’s a master of improvisation precisely because he has already studied all the angles and has three different escape routes up his sleeve. A thief with his reputation can’t afford to take anything on trust – and he didn’t, until Juno.

To hell with it.

Peter presses his mouth to the vulnerable skin at Juno’s throat, buries a hand in Juno’s hair. Takes what Juno so obviously wants to give him and finally, finally closes the gap between their bodies.

“What do you want, Juno?” Peter asks, as Juno lets himself be pulled into Peter’s arms and pushed back against the counter.

“You. I want you,” he chokes out. “I want you to take me apart, ruin me, do whatever you want to me -”

 _Not that good a lay_ , he’d scoffed. As if there was anybody else in the galaxy who would say what Juno just had in such a beautiful broken voice, anybody else who would offer him everything without Peter even having to ask.

“Oh, Juno,” he breathes, and kisses him.

 

Peter Nureyev takes Juno Steel to bed. It might be a terrible idea, but Peter has made a success of a lot of theoretically terrible ideas in his time. And besides, in bed at least Juno already wants to give him everything he could possibly ask for.

 

“I thought about you,” Juno pants in the dark. “I thought about you all the damn time.”

“What did you think?” Peter kisses his neck, marvels at the way Juno shivers at the scrape of his teeth and tips his head back, offering more.

A breathless laugh. “This, of course.”

Peter bites then sucks, meaning to leave a mark, and Juno’s breathing goes ragged.

“Exactly this?”

Juno blurts out: “No, I thought about you telling me what you really thought of me and - holding me down and hurting me. And I got off on it, I -”

A dark spike of desire curls down his spine and prickles across his skin. It isn’t what he thought of, on all those nights he couldn’t help but think of Juno, but it has an echo somewhere in Peter that does want to pin him down and hiss, _you’re a coward, I came back for you but you left me without a word._

“If you’re looking for someone to brutalise you, you’re going to be disappointed,” Peter says, wrenching himself back from that jagged edge. “And I’d hate to be disappointing.”

“I know, that’s not – that’s not what I want, I want - ” Peter interrupts him with a kiss that’s all tongue and teeth that he absolutely does mean as a suggestion.

When he lets Juno up for air, Juno pants, “You know what, let’s just go with what you want. That’ll probably work better.”

It’s _incredible_ how Juno presses every single one of his buttons without even seeming to try.

Voice like silk in Juno’s ear, Peter murmurs, “Then I think I would like to hold you down and hurt you, just a very little bit. To make sure you remember me.”

The sort of _hurt_ that occurs to Peter probably isn’t quite what Juno has in mind, but there’s something viscerally uncomplicated about holding him down, a simple physical demonstration of what he wants. He presses Juno’s hands into the pillow above his head, and Juno’s reaction is unmistakable.

He arches his back and pushes back just enough to test Peter’s grip before relaxing his arms and lies there, waiting. Peter’s never fought with Juno Steel and he certainly doesn’t want to, but he’s pretty sure nonetheless that if Juno Steel had any doubts about being held down, Peter would be halfway across the room with a broken nose by now: the only possible conclusion is that Juno has him right where he wants him. It’s intoxicating, how willingly Juno hands himself over like he doesn’t even know the value of the gift.

Peter will just have to show him.

“Stay just like that for me,” he breathes into Juno’s ear, and begins kissing and stroking his way down his chest, rubbing his face against all that soft skin, listening to every hitch in Juno’s breath and feeling his muscles tense and relax.

“There’s handcuffs in the drawer,” Juno chokes out, and Peter stops short, all those dark impulses flooding back. He wouldn’t do anything Juno didn’t want him to, not really, but the idea that he could -

“Really, Juno?”

“You said not until the second date, didn’t you? Feels like a second date to me.”

“Rex Glass said that, not me,” he replies automatically. Rex Glass, he decides in this very moment, enjoys being handcuffed to the bed. Peter Nureyev categorically does not, but that’s not what Juno wants anyway.

Juno’s looking at him so intently, like this means more to him than just a simple expression of his sexual tastes.

“Because you trust me,” Peter asks slowly, kissing his stomach for the thrill of seeing him squirm, “Or you want me to be the knife at your throat?”

“Because I trust you, dumbass. It’s me I’m not so sure about,” Juno says on a gasp as Peter kisses lower and lower. He’s so beautifully responsive, immediate feedback to everywhere Peter touches him. He almost doesn’t trust _himself_ with Juno Steel in handcuffs.

But Peter has never been very good at denying himself what he wants, especially not when it’s what the handsome detective he’s been dreaming about for months wants too. And like an unbreakable thread at the back of his mind, the awareness that this is almost an audition. If all Juno will accept from him is sex, then sex is what Peter will have to use to leave him wanting more.

He retrieves Juno’s handcuffs, and if Juno were paying attention he’d realise right there that Peter had searched his apartment. There are several drawers, all equally full of unclassifiable clutter, and Peter reaches straight for the right spot in the right one. But Peter would have been doing something very wrong if he’d got Juno Steel into bed, naked, and still paying attention to trifling matters like _has Peter Nureyev searched my apartment._

Juno offers him one wrist then the other and lies back still and pliant, but his one eye tracks where Peter puts the key down.

“I’m not going to walk out and leave you like this, in case you were wondering,” he says conversationally, settling back between Juno’s legs.

“Aw, way to spoil the surprise, Nureyev. Not knowing is half the fun.” Of course Juno Steel would call the risk of being abandoned in handcuffs _fun_.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Juno. There are plenty of other ways to keep it exciting,” Peter says, flicking open the lube so that Juno can hear it. “Spread your legs for me, darling…”

Juno groans and complies, a sound that might be Peter’s name on his lips.

The noises that Juno makes with Peter’s fingers inside him are all breathy vowels that sharpen and fade as his hand moves, like they’re echoing the changing neon colours that filter through from the street outside. Arms above his head, his body is a taut line leading to Peter, moving against that one point of contact. Clenching and relaxing, the muscles in his thighs flexing, and Peter wishes – Peter wants – he wants to show Juno this, how beautiful he is, how much it turns him on to hear his voice break, see his hands make fists against the cuffs when Peter finds just the right spot.

Perhaps he’s deluding himself, but he refuses to believe that Juno offers all of this to everybody he sleeps with.

A gentle bite to his inner thigh provokes a different sort of sound: surprise, perhaps. The handcuffs rattle when he sucks a mark there, one more for Juno to remember him by if this is all there is.

Juno is gratifyingly breathless when he says, “Don’t take this as a complaint, Nureyev, but nothing’s hurting so far.”

“Oh, we can move on to that now, if you’re in a hurry.” Peter opens the handcuffs, kisses the confusion off Juno’s face. “Turn over, Juno,” he orders and Juno does without a second’s hesitation.

No hesitation, but there is tension in his shoulders, bracing himself for the unknown. Perhaps Juno thinks Peter does mean to hit him, or just use him, fuck him hard and selfish, take his own pleasure in inflicting pain. As if he would ever do anything so crude. Juno is slick and open and Peter slides in as slow as he can, feeling Juno tense with anticipation beneath him. Leans forward to lace his fingers through Juno’s, holding his hands more than holding he’s him down. He knows Juno can tell the difference.

It’s almost impossible to keep his voice steady as he makes love to Juno, so he doesn’t even try. Lets Juno hear every crack and break that he has inflicted.

“I told you I’d fallen in love with you and that was true, Juno,” Peter whispers into his ear as he pulls out and thrusts slowly back in to the hot clasp of his body. “And I’m still in love with you now. All these months, I thought about you all the time, I was miserable without you. I couldn’t look at anybody else. All that beauty out there, all those planets I still haven’t seen, and none of it means anything to me without you.”

“No,” Juno chokes out, routine protest with no force behind it. He spreads his legs wider, letting Peter sink even deeper inside him.

“I’m only here on Mars because of you, Juno. I couldn’t stay away. I’ve worked alone and travelled the galaxy alone for 20 years now, but I can’t carry on like that if there’s the slightest chance of sharing even the smallest part of it with you.”

It’s all spilling out of him now as pleasure sparks from every nerve. He’s thought about Juno for so long, about what he’d say if he saw him again. All those imaginary conversations distilled into this one, where he isn’t being cool and seductive at all, he isn’t offering Juno the bloodless compromise solution that seemed so reasonable when the only alternative was a life entirely without him. He had only intended to hurt Juno by reminding him what he already knew of Peter’s feelings, the merest hint of retaliation for abandoning him, not this outpouring of everything he felt and everything he wanted.

“You’re so brave, and trying so hard to do the right thing -”

Juno’s face is buried in the pillow. “Stop it, Nureyev.”

Peter changes the angle so there’s less of his weight on Juno’s hands, but it’s Juno who tightens his grip, clinging on as Peter fucks him.

“And I almost couldn’t bear it when I woke up and realised you had just left me there, but I’m still in love with you…”

He wrenches one hand away from Juno’s to reach down to his cock. Juno arches his back to give him access, and just when Peter’s afraid he’s going to ruin everything by coming first Juno thrusts frantically forward into his fist and back onto his cock and cries out and shoots all over Peter’s hand. Coming and coming, his whole body shaking, pulling Peter closer.

And much as he would have liked to be lucid and detached in this moment of Juno’s greatest vulnerability, use it to his advantage to say whatever it is he needs to convince Juno there is some realistic future waiting for them, it’s too late now. Juno Steel coming undone in his arms like his most potent fantasy is too much for him. He pulls Juno hard into him, gives three, four, five frantic thrusts, and is swept away by orgasm, his spine gone liquid with pleasure, all the loneliness of the last eight months both amplified and wiped away as he clutches Juno to him, knowing even as his body finds release that there is no solution here at all.

*

Juno’s face is wet when he rolls over. Peter has left red marks all over his neck and chest and thighs. Utterly debauched and well-fucked, is how he looks, and as soon as the endorphins wear off Peter fully expects to be told to leave.

But for now, Juno reaches for him without a word. Turns away onto his side, pulling Peter’s arm around his chest so they are curled tight together and lacing their fingers together.

Peter kisses his shoulder, the nape of his neck, and waits. Once Juno inhales as if about to speak, and then lets out his breath without saying anything. Peter wonders how he’ll say it – will there be a polite _, I guess you have to go now?_ An ambiguous, _I’ll call you_ , or a point-blank, _this was a mistake, Nureyev?_ He very much doesn’t want to have to get dressed and leave now. The neon lit darkness Juno’s shabby apartment feels like a sanctuary he hasn’t known for many years, the closest place to safe he can imagine.

Finally Juno says, very quietly: “When I left…you know it wasn’t that I didn’t – that I don’t – Because I do. Love you. I love you, ok?”

There’s something defiant about the words but his tone is as soft as Peter has ever heard.

“I don’t see what’s in it for you, is the only thing,” Juno continues. “I wanted you, every damn day, but I wouldn’t have called you if it hadn’t been for the robot thing, because why would you have wanted me to? Only a moron would want that, and you’re not a moron.”

“You’re what’s in it for me,” Peter murmurs. “I can steal anything else I want, but you -”

There is a small silence while both of them apparently debate the corniness of _you stole my heart_ , and jointly decide they can do better.

“I love you, Juno. I should never have expected you to drop everything and come with me, but I can’t stay on Mars for good, so…”

If he hasn’t found the end of that sentence in eight months, the answer isn’t going to come to him now. He holds Juno a little tighter and tells himself to enjoy it while it lasts.

Juno’s face is very serious.

“Can you stay tonight, at least?” he whispers. “And I won’t hold it against you if you walk out in the night. I’ve got that coming to me.”

Peter scoffs. “That move’s been played now, I’d have to think of one of my own. It would just be tacky to repeat it.” As if he could ever leave when Juno wants him to stay.

“And I did save you from the killer robot.”

“You did, didn’t you? Well in that case, I think I can commit to being here when you wake up.”

“I mean, you’ve gotta stick around to see how I’m gonna screw it up this time. Suspense must be killing you,” Juno says through a yawn. “But I’m gonna try not to. Nureyev? You hear me? I’m gonna try so hard not to.”

*

He wakes with the dull red of a Martian midday shining into the room, and Juno is still there. Of course he is: it’s his apartment. Where would he go?

Peter tiptoes into the bathroom, resisting the temptation to rummage in favour of slipping back into bed as silently as he can: he’s on borrowed time, and he’d rather spend it watching Juno sleep than finding out what brand of shampoo he uses. Juno stirs as he lies back down, and Peter tenses, bracing himself for a dismissal. A lot of things seem different in daylight - it’s why he never spends the night with anybody he sleeps with in a professional context. Too easy, in the moments before you’re truly awake, to let slip what you really feel.

But Juno just blinks at him and snuggles closer. “I’m gonna get up and make coffee in just a minute,” he promises, face muffled in Peter’s shoulder. “You want some?”

There may be mould in Juno’s fridge, but he isn’t supposed to know that, so Peter just says, “Yes please,” and runs his hand down the warm skin of Juno’s side. He’s going to enjoy this while it lasts, he reminds himself, these moments before all Juno’s defences come back up where he seems happy to just lie here together and let Peter hold him.

When he finally pulls away he sits up, hair a wild tangle of curls, and puts a hand on Peter’s chest to stop him doing the same.

“Stay there, Nureyev. You’re getting the 5 star Juno Steel’s apartment treatment. How do you take your coffee?”

“Black, no sugar,” he says, stretching languidly across Juno’s bed and shamelessly watching him pull a robe on. “Whatever have I done to deserve such an honour?”

Juno hesitates in the doorway biting his lip as if Peter’s sprawling is just too enticing to step away from, which is certainly the effect he was hoping for.

“Oh, you’ve done plenty,” Juno says, cryptic as ever, and finally tears himself away.

Juno might have left the bedroom barefoot and wearing only a slightly worse-for-wear silk robe, but Peter still finds himself listening anxiously for any sound of him leaving the apartment. The clothes he was wearing last night are still scattered where they fell, his own strewn around in similar abandon. Juno may be prepared to go to great lengths to avoid intimacy, but sneaking out of his own home looking so very delectable seems unlikely when a simple _get out, Nureyev_ would have sufficed. So Peter forces himself to appear relaxed, to lie back in Juno’s bed and act like he hasn’t a care in the world.

The sound of the front door buzzing has him sitting bolt upright in alarm. But Juno’s footsteps go to the door, exchange apparently friendly words with whoever is there, and then it closes again and Juno reappears holding two takeout cups of coffee.

“Turns out I didn’t have any coffee, but the bar downstairs owes me one. Well, two. Here - ”

He hands one of the cups to Peter, and then stands there watching him as if the sight of Peter Nureyev in his bed is so strange he doesn’t know what to do with it. Peter isn’t sure he knows what to do with it either. He still can’t shake the feeling that they’re playing at something that never was and never will be, at a domestic future where they sleep together and wake up together and drink coffee together. Not so very much to ask, he thinks. Millions of people do it every day.

“Come back to bed, Juno,” he tells him. He is very sure about this, sure enough to get a smile out of Juno as he settles back at his side, looking at him expectantly. The robe slides off one shoulder and Juno lets it, and that’s something else Peter could get used to as well.

“So…what do we do, Nureyev?”

That’s the million cred question _. Leave your life behind and run away with me_ no longer sounds like a realistic option, and Peter knows he can’t stay on Mars forever. But if he’s spent all night knowing he’ll take scraps if that’s all Juno’s offering, then that is where he’ll have to start. One scrap after another, even if there are gaps in them, until they hold together to make a whole.

“Well, if you’re asking about the most immediate future, I don’t have to be anywhere for some days,” he says, deliberately vague even as his heart races: Juno Steel asking him about the future is not an opportunity he ever expected to be offered, almost too good to be true. “And what about you? What are your professional commitments at the moment?”

“Uh, well I disappeared into the desert for three weeks and the guy I was working for just died after trying to brainwash the entire city, so I think we can file that invoice straight in overdue. And I just spent my last 5 creds getting the dive bar downstairs to bring me this coffee.” He shrugs extravagantly, takes a sip and looks at Peter. “So I guess I’ll take the day off.”

There’s nothing for it but to play the cards he’s got. Peter puts his coffee down, ready for Juno to take offense. He can hear his own pulse loud in his ears as he says:

“Then I’d like to hire you for a week. I require the services of a private detective to come to New Elysium with me, sip cocktails by the pool, eat well, sleep well -”

“You want to _pay_ me to spend a week with you?” there’s barely a hint of outrage there. Surprise, yes, but to his amazement it seem this barely registers in the scale of things Peter has done to infuriate Juno.

“Yes,” Peter says calmly. He’s always been good at playing a bad hand.

Juno scrubs a hand across his face and blinks at him.

“Oh, well, good to know I can fall back on escort services if the detective business goes under,” he says. “Unless you’d call this outright prostitution?”

“I’d call it economic pragmatism under late-stage capitalism: your time has monetary value and you need money; I want your time and I have money.”

“Huh. Win-win, right?”

“I like to think so. And of course the details of exactly how we spend that time can be negotiated later: I wouldn’t want you to think you’re signing away your bodily autonomy or agreeing to anything untoward.”

The smile on Juno’s face is exactly the sort of smile Peter wants to see the morning after, like he’s thinking he would happily hand over his bodily autonomy if it means Peter Nureyev will make love to him like _that_ again. Peter might just be hearing what he wants to hear, but it sounds a lot like Juno is saying yes. And then, infuriatingly, it sounds like his comms ringing, somewhere from the floor.

Peter finds it first.

“It’s your secretary,” he tells Juno, holding it out.

Juno flops onto his back and groans, a deep, heartfelt groan that contains years of love and frustration.

“You might as well answer it. She’s only calling me to ask about you anyway.”

“Hello, Rita,” Peter says.

“Mr – wait, you’re not Mr Steel! You’re – Mr Steel’s mystery lover! Did you steal his comms and leave in the night or are you still there?”

“Oh, I’m very much still here, Rita.”

“And Mr Steel’s still there too?” Her excitement is clearly audible, a rising pitch barely contained.

Peter holds the comms out for Juno to say something, and he scowls furiously but offers a relatively civil, “Hello, Rita.”

Peter takes the comms back and settles back into the pillows next to Juno. He’s not above taking Rita’s help to get what he wants, now that she’s so obligingly on the line and so inexplicably in favour of whatever is going on here.

“As it happens, I have a question for the finance department of the Juno Steel Detective Agency. I need a quote for hiring a detective for…let’s say…a week? The job I have in mind would require off-planet travel and I would need exclusivity during that week. All travel costs would be paid by me upfront, of course.”

“Weeeell,” Rita says, tapping at the computer. “I’m assuming you only need Mr Steel’s…services -” Juno groans again at this – “for this job and not the whole agency, and I’m sure you already know that all expenses incurred are also billable to the client, sooo….” The sound of more typing.

“Rita, you know what the rates are, they haven’t changed in 10 years,” Juno complains, but Peter waves an arm to shush him.

“I’m just making sure, Mr Steel! I wouldn’t want to undervalue your _services – “_

“Will you stop that?”

“And we got rent to pay here, you know, and then there’s _my_ salary, and I don’t think Mr O’Flaherty is gonna pay his invoice -”

“I’m certain I can agree to almost any reasonable fee…”

“Fifty credits a day!” Rita concludes triumphantly. “Now, sure, maybe you could get someone from a real shiny reputable private detective agency for fifty credits a day, but none of them have got Mr Steel on staff, have they?”

“I’ll take the job, but he’ll get back to you about the fees,” Juno declares, snatching the comms out of his hand. “Bye now, Rita. I promise I’ll come by the office before I go anywhere.”

And with that he hangs up, and drops the comms off the side of the bed.

Peter props himself up on one elbow and drinks in the sight of Juno Steel covered in love bites and wearing only a robe that reveals more than it conceals, looking back at him with a challenge sparkling in his gaze. Juno who has insisted on bringing him breakfast in bed, who has told his secretary that they spent the night together and allowed her to tease him about it, and who appears to be agreeing to come away with him for a week. Juno stretched out on the rumpled sheets of his own bed, letting Peter see everything. Letting whoever brought up the coffee see quite a lot too, he realises - that robe might have been expressly designed for making non-verbal I-got-laid-last-night statements to anyone who comes to the door. It’s hardly a marriage certificate, except coming from Juno Steel it almost is: a public declaration to the people he sees every day, to his closest friend, that there’s something important connecting him to Peter Nureyev.

“You wanna sign a contract or something?” Juno asks, half teasing but not quite. “Make it legally binding?”

Instead of an answer he rolls on top of Juno so that he’s straddling him and unties the robe, pushing it aside to trace his fingers over all the marks his mouth left on Juno’s neck and chest. Juno’s warm hands slide up his thighs, and that’s more than enough for his body to start reacting to Juno’s.

It’s time to make leap of faith in Juno Steel and his intentions. He has come here to Mars, he has deliberately become involved in Juno’s life and accepted everything Juno offered him, so either he’s got to believe him now or walk away.

A successful thief knows who to keep close, and Peter Nureyev is not just successful, he’s exceptional. He has only one real identity, and this one person who knows it and who could betray him or be used against him or cloud his judgement. He doesn’t want to live alone any more, and the price for waking up with Juno Steel is accepting that Juno could leave him: there is no meaning to anything he does without that risk, without giving away something of himself and knowing Juno could destroy it.

Peter shakes his head, and makes his leap. “Your word is good enough for me,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just really really emotionally invested in a plausible future happiness for this bisexual human disaster detective and his dramatic master thief. Let Juno Steel Be Happier 2k19!  
> I'm on [tumblr](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/) unless it all burns to the ground tomorrow, and if it does then I guess I'm doing [twitter?](https://twitter.com/Deputychairman_/) How do we even do fandom on twitter anyway? Don't Real People hang out there, using their Real Names? ugh. Peter Nureyev knows what he's about.


End file.
